


one for each

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Brother Feels, Burning of the Ships at Losgar, Gen, Poor Maedhros, Post-Rescue from Thangorodrim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 12:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18011108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: The youngest visits the eldest.





	one for each

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Victoryindeath2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Victoryindeath2/gifts).



“My lord,” the guard at the tent says, bowing so that Ambarussa is staring at his own distorted reflection in the dome of a silver helm, “By whose command do you enter here?”

“My own.” He is Fëanáro’s son; he can be proud when he wants to. “Stand aside.”

“But the Ki—Prince Makalaurë’s order were strict. No one visits without—”

“ _Stand aside_.”

The guard is young; as young as Ambarussa, maybe. Or maybe no one will ever be quite as young as him (as  _them_ ), even when the world has shredded itself away.

The guard stands aside.

“Impressive,” Nelyo observes, from where he is stretched out like a corpse half-shrouded. His eyes are shut.

There is no part of Nelyo that looks like Nelyo anymore. The whole place smells of blood and antiseptic; even Nelyo’s skin might reek of iron, if one were to get too close.

Ambarussa (only one, always one) bites back tears that shouldn’t fall. He lives; he has seen exactly what, in ashes, tears will not bring back from the dead.

When next he lifts his head, Nelyo has opened his eyes.

“You were always the worst at hiding things, Pityo,” he says softly, almost amiably. “Come, tell me what disgusts you so in my miserable flesh. It will hurt me less to hear the truth than Makalaurë’s honeyed assurances that I am sitting up more easily, or Tyelko’s constant insistence that I am less gaunt by the day.”

“I am not disgusted,” Ambarussa answers, with effort. “I am…I grieve.”

“For the living! At least you are more honest than most of us.”

As if Nelyo did not grieve for their father, while he lived. As if Nelyo—or any of them, yes, especially since the ships—can even speak of Amil at all.

Amil lives.

 _I wanted to go back to her_ , whispers a little voice in Ambarussa’s inmost ear, and he begs it to be silent.

Nelyo is still watching him. Maybe his eyes are still the same, in color if not in brilliance.

If not in warmth.

“I came to ask you something.”

“And you were brave to.” Nelyo laughs, but the sound is hacked off by a cough that seems to stiffen his ribs with pain. His face does not flinch, though. “Did you know that Atarinkë will barely look at me? A good semblance, even if I  _could_  forget, of how Atar might have looked—”

“Nelyo, please!” He will weep if his brother continues to rattle on in this bright, cruel manner.

This, Ambarussa supposes, is why Makalaurë forbade anyone to come alone, without his leave.

Nelyo flinches then, and his skin seems to fade to still paler greyness. “I should ask your forgiveness, Pityo,” he says, more quietly. “I am gone a little wild, lying here. It is nothing; it will pass.”

Here it is, in sharp reality: the moment for his penitence. Ambarussa clears his throat.

“I want to apologize, to you as my—my eldest brother and my king. I thought you were dead, though I could still feel you.” He bites his knuckles, a childlike impulse, but one acted on unconsciously, here. “Because...he is dead, and yet I still feel him, too.”

The moment hangs like a thread between them.

“I do not blame you.” Nelyo smiles, and for all that it is fond with memory Ambarussa still wants to recoil. “I think I feel him too—never more so than when you are before me. I used to carry you both, one on each hip, even when you were elflings in your first braids. Perhaps I knew you would be my last little brothers.” Then his voice turns almost mocking again, riddled with something rotten. “And perhaps Eru in his goodness knew that with one of you gone, I no longer had need of a second hand, for I only have one too-large little brother left to hold.”

Ambarussa’s tears slip past his defenses. At least they fall in silence. He kneels beside the bed, and Nelyo’s eyes widen.

“Please,” Ambarussa says, and reaches out. Nelyo is the one to recoil now—he hates, Makalaurë told Tyelko, told Atarinkë, told all of them—to be touched. “Please, let me.”

Nelyo’s jaw tightens. It is the first familiar expression Ambarussa has seen since his return. That clench of teeth, considering. Considering whether to give in to the baby-tears of his youngest charges.

(Now, there is only one.)

Nelyo stretches out his left hand.

Ambarussa takes it in both of his, and holds it against his cheek. It does not feel the same—how could it? The knuckles are knobby, the nails half-gone, the joints bend in all the wrong places.

It does not feel the same, but he closes his eyes, and it does.


End file.
